Another Bad Dungeons & Dragons Movie

Why is the preeminent fantasy franchise, Dungeons & Dragons, doomed to horrible movies? The first one with the Wayans brother and Ewok village was godawful and I didn’t see the second. This trailer for the third, which allegedly even Syfy won’t air because it’s unwatchable. Just the trailer makes my colon spasm. Awful dialogue, acting, CGI…

My bet is that they sold the rights to the movie before the first one came out and that allowed multiple sequels. It’s like “The Amazing Spiderman”. Sony was about to lose the rights (which would revert back to Marvel/Walt Disney) so they “rebooted” the franchise well before the earlier version’s best before date. I almost guarantee that WotC has almost no say in what is in this film.

Steve is correct. Courtney Solomon bought the rights from TSR in 1990 and it took him a decade to get the money to make the first movie. Given Hasbro’s extension of their properties into film, I would think they’d want to take the rights back if they could do it easily and cost-effectively. Given that WotC has had a lot of bestselling D&D books, they have a lot of material to adapt.

What I wonder is if they could use one of their game worlds with no reference to D&D in it. Eberron, and Dark Sun seem the most likely to me, but there’s lots of possibilities with Dragonlance, FR, Planescape or even Spelljammer. Of course there’s a lot of room to mess up in these places too.